


The Weight of a Name

by misura



Category: Gullstruck Island | The Lost Conspiracy - Frances Hardinge
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1862373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world keeps changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weight of a Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mairelon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mairelon/gifts).



"A different name," Mr Prox said, and Hathin saw the way Dance's expression darkened.

Mr Prox was very clever with numbers. She'd seen him write dispatches to Port Suddenwind, full of turned little phrases and innocent-sounding long words. He knew of more than a dozen ways to fold a napkin, too, which did not seem to Hathin to be a particularly useful thing to know, but even so.

Even so, Mr Prox appeared to like knowing these things, and because he also knew a lot of things that had, at one point or another, come in very useful, Hathin accepted that knowing how to fold a napkin when you were having fish for lunch might be useful, too.

"A new name," she said, because making Dance angry or simply upsetting her was not useful at all.

It hadn't what Mr Prox had intended to do, she knew. It was just that in his mind, he had already worked out everything very cleverly - all the bits and pieces fitted together perfectly.

"For the Reckoning," she added, because Dance couldn't know that had been what Mr Prox had been getting at.

Names were important things, after all. If you took away someone's name, you took away their life as well. You took away everything they had done and said before you took away their name.

In her head, Hathin knew that Mr Prox was right in wanting the Reckoning to change their name. In her heart, she was less sure.

"We need people to uphold the law," Mr Prox said. "People who will investigate crimes, wherever they have happened and whomever may have committed them."

"But the law says the Reckoning are criminals, and we can't set criminals to catch other criminals," said Hathin. "Not openly."

The Lace had always been very good at keeping secrets. At not talking to outsiders.

It hadn't stopped Lost Inspector Skein from realizing that people were disappearing, but maybe, just maybe, if people had asked more questions and given more answers and kept less secrets, someone, somewhere might have realized what was going on sooner.

"And there have been fewer and fewer people taking the tattoo, these past years," Mr Prox said.

Dance's face didn't darken this time. Hathin thought that Dance probably assumed Hathin had told Mr Prox this, even though she hadn't done anything of the sort.

"Which is good, obviously," Hathin said. Every man or woman who took the butterfly tattoo had been wronged, denied the justice they felt they deserved by the people who should see to it that justice was done.

Fewer people taking the tattoo meant that fewer people were wronged. That Mr Prox was doing a good job, with all his organizing and calculating and scribbling and proper folding of napkins.

Hardly anybody would tell you he actually liked Minchard Prox, but when he walked up to you with some plan, some thing he wanted done that would make life better or easier or safer for everyone - well, it would be rather childish and petty to refuse to help simply because Mr Prox had thought of it before anyone else had, wouldn't it?.

(And someone else would have thought of it eventually. Everyone always wanted to be clear about that, especially the first few months. Of course, people said, someone would have thought of using pigeons to carry around the news the Lost had helped spread before. Of course someone would have thought of organizing patrols to look out for bandits and pirates, now that the Lost couldn't do that anymore. Mr Prox wasn't especially clever or anything; he was simply a bit quicker than the rest of them that was all, and he probably only was quicker because he didn't have anything else to do.)

"I have drawn up some paperwork," Mr Prox said, producing said paperwork. Someone at Port Suddenwind might read it, and put a stamp on it, and then that would be that.

No more Reckoning - although, of course, according to Port Suddenwind, they had not existed for years and years now. Decades.

It was very easy to lie when you put words and numbers on paper, Hathin had realized, almost at the same time she had realized that putting words and numbers on paper also made it easier to see the truth sometimes, and to make that truth visible to other people. As Bridle had done, with his maps.

"What would we need to do?" Dance asked, but she was looking at Hathin, who heard the question underneath the one that Dance had asked out loud.

_Is this not your idea instead of Minchard Prox's?_

Hathin nodded once, very slightly, and some of the tension went out of Dance's shoulders.

Dance's tattoo was still unfinished. Her quest for justice had not yet been completed - and probably, Hathin thought, it would never be. It was Dance's decision, Dance's right to choose.

"Nothing at all," Mr Prox said. "For now, at least. We need Port Suddenwind's approval, first, before we can make any changes."

"Mr Prox only wanted to talk things over with you, before doing anything," Hathin said.

Dance's expression was thoughtful now. Hathin thought that Dance might be imagining her future, trying to prevent wrongs before they even happened. Before someone would feel he or she needed to become a revenger.

"It will be good, I think," Dance said, eventually. "I have no objection if you do this."

"Good," Mr Prox said. "You will be connected to Hathin's network of information-gatherers, of course - to make sure you know where you are needed, and I have set up a system of apprenticeships that will ensure your skills do not get lost, and - give me a moment."

"Those are all things we should talk about later," Hathin said. She had seen the plans. They were very good. Once put into effect, it would be very difficult for anyone to kill or kidnap people without someone noticing.

Many of them, she had thought up herself. Mr Prox had put them down into words and numbers. He had calculated what it would cost, to know quickly when there was a storm or when there were pirates - and what it would cost to not know, or to know less quickly.

"Of course." Mr Prox smiled. It was not a Lace smile, but it made him look happy. "Will you stay for lunch?"

Hathin did not think Mr Prox would ever use Dance's name. It was the part of him that was not Lace; the part of him that enabled him to write a perfectly truthful report to Port Suddenwind and use it to trick them and lie to them.

"Thank you," Dance said, rising. "I think I will."

Her look, this time, told Hathin that they would talk in private, later, about things that did not concern Mr Prox, and Hathin nodded, once.

She would never be a person without a face, standing behind Mr Prox, putting ideas in his head and in his mouth and in his hand, which wrote them down as if they were his own, but for now, at least, she was Hathin, whom the Reckoning served, and that was really not any of Mr Prox's business at all.


End file.
